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Comment Re:Now with all those dead features. (Score 1) 42

You think FOSS has a monopoly on idiotic names?

FOSS may have GIMP, but Microsoft has WiMP and WinCE. But software names are far less stupid than automobile names.

I just saw a truck in the parking lot with the trunk emblazoned "Toyota TRD". I had to do a double take, Toyota Turd? That's what it says in txtspk.

How about the Dodge Startus, er, Stratus? The Chevy Nova? "No va" is Spanish for "doesn't go." Worse yet is the KIA. What damned fool named a car company the military acronym for Killed In Action??

How about Nestea? Yassah, I'm gonna love me some o'thet Nasty!

Does your town have an oriental restaurant named the Dynasty? Come on, I'm going to eat in a restaurant named "die nasty"??

Submission + - Drone hunters lining up and paying out in Colorado (networkworld.com) 1

coondoggie writes: What might have started out a whimsical protest against government surveillance tactics has morphed into a little more than that as a small town in Colorado has found itself overwhelmed with requests and cash for a unmanned aircraft hunting license that doesn't exist — yet.

Comment Re:Le sigh. (Score 1) 178

I just now saw your comment while metamoderating, that was an excellent comment. The two guys who modded you up did well.

A bitmap ASCII (CP437) font? Done. I can crank one out in an hour, tops

You're better than I ever was, then. Of course, my tools were primitive. That took me back to 1984 when I discovered that the video circuit in Radio Shack's MC10 was capable of NTSC standard format quality video (but only in 8 colors) and decided to write a graphics program for it. It was great fun.

Anyway, I decided to add text capabilities to the drawing program, and it took a hell of a lot longer than an hour. I mapped it out on graph paper first, which took hours in itself and probably an hour to input the codes.

Since I'd made it so you could print your artwork on it's plotter, I eventually made it into a word processor. In 20k running on a 6802 chip IIRC.

Primitive times, a year later when I was looking for work the guy who interviewed me bragged about his mainframe, which had a whopping two megabytes of memory. I didn't get the job.

I haven't done any "real" programming since they ditched NOMAD and dBase and switched to MS Access at work ten years ago. Yech, glad I retire next year.

Submission + - Universal Genome Sequencing at Birth? (sciencemag.org) 1

sciencehabit writes: In a few years, all new parents may go home from the hospital with not just a bundle of joy, but with something else—the complete sequence of their baby’s DNA. A new research program funded at $25 million over 5 years by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will explore the promise—and ethical challenges—of sequencing every newborn’s genome.

Submission + - NRA Joins ACLU Lawsuit Against NSA (thehill.com)

cold fjord writes: The Hill reports, "The National Rifle Association joined the American Civil Liberties Union's lawsuit on Wednesday to end the government's massive phone record collection program. In a brief filed in federal court, the NRA argues that the National Security Agency's database of phone records amounts to a "national gun registry." "It would be absurd to think that the Congress would adopt and maintain a web of statutes intended to protect against the creation of a national gun registry, while simultaneously authorizing the FBI and the NSA to gather records that could effectively create just such a registry," the group writes. ... In its filing, the gun-rights group claims that the NSA's database would allow the government to identify and track gun owners based on whether they've called gun stores, shooting ranges or the NRA. "Under the government’s reading of Section 215, the government could simply demand the periodic submission of all firearms dealers’ transaction records, then centralize them in a database indexed by the buyers’ names for later searching," the NRA writes."

Submission + - Researchers crack Windows 8 picture passwords (networkworld.com)

colinneagle writes: We all know text-based passwords are not overly secure, so when Microsoft offered a Picture Gesture Authentication (PGA) system on Windows 8, many people chose that option. However, researchers at Arizona State University, Delaware State University and GFS Technology Inc. analyzed picture gesture authentication on more than 10,000 picture passwords collected from more than 800 subjects through online user studies, and found that regardless of what image you selected, your unique picture password gestures may not be so unique after all.

The research found that the strength of picture gesture password has a "strong connection" to how long a person spent setting up that password gesture. The most common gesture combination is three taps, meaning it took about 4.33 — 5.74 seconds to setup. Passwords with two circles and one line took the longest average input time of about 10.19 seconds. After studying why people choose certain categories of images, the most common gesture types and direction patterns in PGA passwords, the researchers developed an attack framework that is "capable of cracking passwords on previously unseen pictures in a picture gesture authentication system."

Comment Re:Short memories (Score 1) 95

And what was your problem with Altavista?

My problem with it was that it wasn't really a search engine. It did no web crawling and sites were added by hand -- and it was damned hard to get your site on it. I was on all the rest of them, and I argued with them about the poor selection of Quake sites they had, some of the worst, content-free crap out there, while mine was actually excellent (other webmasters listed by Altavisa told me "your site puts mine to shame").

Infoseek was IMO the best one before Google came along. I fell in love with Google when I discovered it mostly because a search for just the word "quake" brought my site in something like third place. Of course, lots of folks linked to me.

Comment Re:Rex Nebular (Score 1) 5

I hadn't played that one even though I was a rabid gamer back then, but looking at the wikipedia entry I can see what you're saying.

Rex Nebular seems to be the polar opposite of the 1st person perspective guy (sorry, I'm stoned). I wish I'd have seen that game.

Comment Re:open source office suite will never succeed (Score 1) 72

The fact that Linux has every feature Windows has while Windows lacks features that Linux has had for years is fact, not opinion. The fact that Linux is faster on the same machine is not opinion, but fact.

I use both OSes. Windows falls short everywhere except eye candy and gaming, which they excel at. Fact, not opinion.

Comment Re:McGrew (Score 1) 5

Mars Needs Women.

That tickled a long-disused memory neuron... I think I've seen that phrase in a short story decades ago.

I was thinking how few women go into STEM and how few females there were in the old American west.

And thanks, I'm really looking forward to no more MS Access (and alarm clocks).

Comment Re:Impressive. (Score 1) 196

Obviously when there is 50% unemployment something will have to change (like doubling wages and cutting hours in half).

When unemployment and poverty get high enough it's amazing how many conservatives become liberals. Look at the depression -- most of today's social programs started then.

As to "our inbred desire to kill people", that is certainly NOT inbred. Violence is a learned reaction, not hereditary.

Comment Re:Impressive. (Score 1) 196

Excellent comment. To my fellow slashdotters, it's obvious that caseih is a farmer from his user name. CaseIH makes tractors. It used to be two companies; Case and International Harvester. We used Case tractors on the flightline when I was in the USAF; they don't (or didn't) only make farm equipment then.

I see their ads all the time on TV.

And if anyone is wondering what a farmer is doing at slashdot, farming isn't for dumb people any more; farmers have to know chemistry, biology, and tech. Today's farmers are nerds.

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